i.
Strategy without arithmetic
A strategy that has not been costed in people and capital is a statement of intent. We put numbers against it until it either survives or is honestly abandoned.
Executive advisory · chief executives & boards
Most strategies do not fail. They are never executed.
I work with chief executives and boards on the least glamorous problem in business: the distance between what leadership decided and what the organisation actually does on Monday morning.
Accepting two new engagements next quarter
- 22yrsIn the chair and advising it
- 40+Chief executives advised
- 3Current board seats
- 6Engagements a year, at most
The gap nobody owns
Nobody was negligent. The organisation did what it was built to do.
A board approves a strategy. Twelve months later revenue mix has not moved, the two initiatives that mattered are behind, and everyone can explain why. The causes are almost always structural — and there are three.
ii.
Incentives pointing elsewhere
People do what they are measured on. When the strategy asks for one thing and the bonus plan rewards another, the bonus plan wins — every time, in every company.
iii.
Decisions that never close
The most expensive item in most executive calendars is the decision that has been revisited four times. We find them and force them to a close.
How the gap opens — and closes
Eighteen months, drawn
Month 0 · Approval
The board approves the plan. The line it draws is straight, because plans are. Everyone agrees with it.
Months 3–12 · Drift
The organisation keeps paying, meeting and deciding exactly as before. Activity is high, milestones are green — and behaviour has barely moved.
The intervention · Four levers
Not a new programme. Four structural changes: what people are paid for, where executive time goes, what stops, and a written log of decisions.
Month 18 · Executed
The line bends because the structures bent. In the industrial group below, service revenue went from 12% to 27% with the same people.
In confidence
What chairs and chief executives say afterwards
Elena is the only advisor we have engaged who told the board it was the board’s problem. She was right, and it changed how we governed.
Within a fortnight she had found the decision we had deferred for two years. Eleven weeks later it was made — properly, and without casualties.
I arrived with a hundred-day plan. She talked me out of it. The assessment period I ran instead is the reason year two went well.
No deck, no team of analysts, no retainer that never ends. One person who read everything and said the thing nobody else would.
Selected engagements
Measured at handover, verified by the client
Clients are not named. Every figure below was confirmed by the client’s own finance function, not estimated by me.
27%from 12%
A strategy the organisation had quietly declined
Listed industrial group · Service revenue after 24 months
11weeks
Two years of succession talk, then a decision
Family-owned manufacturer · From engagement to appointment
3.2×faster
An executive meeting that governed nothing
PE-owned healthcare group · Decisions closed per month
Recent writing
Essays on execution, governance and the unsaid
Published when there is something worth saying, not on a schedule. Read by chairs, chief executives and the people who brief them.
Speaking
On stage, in the boardroom
Keynotes for leadership conferences, and closed-door sessions for boards and executive teams at their offsite.
- Upcoming
Why good strategies stall in year two
Annual Chairs’ Forum · London · Keynote
- Keynote
The board’s blind spot: what is not happening
Directors’ Institute Autumn Conference · Chicago · Keynote
- Fireside
Fireside: the incoming CEO’s first year
Private-equity operating partners’ summit · New York · Conversation
Enquiries
If the problem is execution, write to me.
I take four to six engagements a year. The first conversation is thirty minutes, costs nothing, and exists to establish whether I can genuinely help.